What distinguishes academic administration from administration or managing in business? Rudolph Weingartner, arugues that colleges and universities are founded to serve certain purposes; they are supported by governments and private individuals; and, as professional institutions, they have students, among others, as clients to whom they owe education services in ways analogous to the obligations hospitals have via-à-vis their patients. Academic administration is not just another job of managing, but a calling that importantly assists institutions to carry out their (...) missions. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Criticism of the deductive model of explanation continues. In a recent article, “Truisms as the Grounds for Historical Explanations,” Professor Michael Scriven hangs a great many critical points from the distinction between explanations and their justifications. I should like to examine his proposal with a view to showing that in so far as this distinction can be made, it cannot be used as a basis of criticisms of the deductive or covering law model, as it was originally outlined by Professor (...) Carl G. Hempel. (shrink)

The author assesses the complicated issues surrounding the value of Plato's dialogues in college education, offering an historical and textual account of why Plato is readily adopted into the American undergraduate curriculum. Despite this acceptance, students in the classroom often read Platonic dialogues as a body of metaphors instead of a site of significant and practical knowledge. Instructors also frequently emphasize the life of Plato over the philosophical and educational dimensions of the dialogues. The author addresses the educational benefits of (...) reading Plato specifically in terms of how Plato is read in class and the effects of this reading on students’ learning processes. The author offers the example of the Meno, which can instill in students an understanding of education based on knowledge of habit, of the acquisition of skills, and of the process of overcoming intellectual blindness. However, these important pedagogical benefits can be lost if the dialogue is read as a piece of literature or as merely offering insightful metaphors. Thus, the educational value of Plato depends entirely on how Plato is taught, the pedagogical goals of an instructor, and the engagement of students with the material. (shrink)

Philosophic reflection should consider more and different kinds of historical writing than it generally has; the logical features of cultural and intellectual history are important. Certain highly selected features of products of human activities-not individuals or actions-are the subject matter of typical instances of intellectual history; and these features are singled out by the historian's abstracting imagination. In the "stories" which such historians tell, not only are events placed in sequential order, but the relation of reasons to products are traced (...) above all in such a way as to show how some later result is composed of various earlier components. Causality is not the central unifying theme; tracing the relations that hold among the features of various human products is worthwhile even where knowledge of causes remains obscure. (shrink)

The series offers a publication forum for innovative works on all topics of analytic philosophy. The focus is on the disciplines of theoretical philosophy: metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, philosophy of language, logic. Furthermore, works that additionally include contributions to the history of philosophy are also welcome.

The aim of the book is to show that the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas, i.e. his five arguments to prove the existence of God, are logically correct arguments by the standards of modern Predicate Logic. In the first chapter this is done by commenting on the two preliminary articles preceeding the Five Ways in which Thomas Aquinas points out that on the one hand the existence of God is not self-evident to us and on the other hand, that, similar (...) as in some scientific explanations, the mere existence of a cause for an effect which is evidently known to us can be proved. In the second chapter every argument is translated into the symbolic form of Predicate Logic and its logical validity is shown. Additionally a detailed and critical discussion of the premises of each argument is given. (shrink)

The aim of the book is to refute the claim that God's omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence on the one hand and the existence of evil on the other are together inconsistent. This is shown first by unmasking many types of such claims as either logical fallacies or as presupposing false assumptions. Secondly the author formulates God's attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence and the existence of 10 types of evil in an axiomatic system. This contains the theorems about God's knowledge, (...) will, causation and benevolence without leading to any inconsistency. It proves the compatibility between God's attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and benevolence with the fact of existence of evil. The author offers a consistency proof for the whole axiomatic system with the help of a model in which all axioms and theorems are satisfied"-- Back cover. (shrink)